Malaysian musical artist Bumi Liar (real name Izuan Shah) undertook a six-week residency at Rimbun Dahan in April-May 2025.
About the Artist
Izuan Shah is a songwriter/composer and multi-instrumental musician based in Kuala Lumpur. He has a music repertoire stretching back 20 years with his art band Auburn, his pop duo Emmett I, and various other featured appearances. He trained at the Australia Institute of Music in Sydney, majoring in composition. Returning on break in 2013, he was awarded for his music video treatment to Auburn’s song, “Youth”, in the Best Digital Music Video category at the Malaysian Digital Film Awards that year. In 2019, his rock song for Emmett I, “Mogok”, was featured in the Southeast Asian blockbuster film, Polis Evo 2.
In January 2024, his song “Jiwa Kuala Lumpur”, written for his hometown on a routine LRT commute to the studio, was performed by the Kuala Lumpur’s DBKL Orchestra. At the end of last year, he was made honorary member of London-based collective Bill Dury And The Healers in Camden’s vibrant pub scene.
His songs have arced from the third culture idealism of his youth towards a more seasoned, rustic worldview which expresses his Southeast Asian consciousness while preserving his sense of romanticism for a just world.
A writer at heart, his lifelong journaling and lyrical practice has crystallised over time as one with his musical output, evolving him into an artist striding further into the realm of poeticism. Izuan’s current residency brings him back home full circle to the essence of his creative purpose: storytelling.
https://www.instagram.com/izuanshah.isme/
https://vimeo.com/81976138
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1EK8FMYRp1JT21bAUAjE2D
About the Residency
My tenure at Rimbun Dahan has removed me from the racing machinery of city existence, and opened me up to redirect my musical journey. Here I am given license to pursue a solo album that accepts realist commercial standards, while crucially returning to the beauty and parity of nature and the communal. My main focus here has entailed the sharpening of an artistic style where an East/West fusion serves the universal receiver, ideally sparking a conjunct spectrum of response and activation from both the proud listener and the inspired arts practitioner. The lyrical work meanwhile should speak for a silent majority, beyond the introspection and catharsis of the songwriter. For my current process, I have deliberately eschewed the luxury of modern studio approaches, making do with only voice, guitar, the humble dabruka hand drum, and maracas to shape the harmonic and rhythmic foundations. With a white canvas to express melody lines and inflections to my taste, I am also prompted to record previously suppressed traditional rhythms myself without relying on the touch of specialist players.
Unique synthesis options are also available to me here, such as live gamelan ensemble, prepared piano, and field recordings. Digital treatment has been only necessary for the rendering of these found sounds into the raw song material to complete these album demos, which will be reproduced in Jakarta as a full-length to be mixed and mastered in London. In a concerted move away from the rock band format, the original spirit of my previous ouvre–truth, resistance, rebellion, protest, amplified dissonance–has not been abandoned, but merely augmented with a matured emotional quotient in resilience towards the external chaos of the times. These dramatic elements have not been necessarily softened, but refined with subtler textures and refrained tones in the performance of my present Bumi Liar vessel (a stage name which translates simply to ‘wild world’) and my personal constitution of what could be defined as contemporary Malaysiana. This Bumi Liar aesthetic was conceived with a view towards preserving the musical, literary, visual, and cultural tenets of my birth heritage, descendant of my multi-strained ‘Nusantaran’ lineage, with all its inherent spiritual, mystical, and folklore aspects. The bi-lingual Melodis Pasca Silam (Post-Ancient Melodist) album may be preceded by an EP, entitled Kehalusan (Refinery), and will be made available into physical formats as a touring card along with its requisite digital presence.